I have one. You better pray it works or is under warranty! I got one that was supposedly surplus from Harris and got a "deal" on it. Ended up sending it back to Daysequerra and it took them 3 months to go through it. I got it back and it worked for awhile. Now, part of the LED bargraph on the lower display stopped working. Their non-warranty repair rates are outrageous, to put it politely. Between the cost and turnaround I decided to use it as-is until it dies and just toss it. I've heard others call it high class garbage and my experience makes me put it in the same class on how I feel about Arrakis consoles.

Unless you're getting a screamin' deal I'd ponder it with a clear head before jumping on it. I've never had any experience this bad with analog or digial Belars.

I had an M2 as well. Some of the LEDs were so bright you could light up a room with them. The two bar-graph displays never lined up even with a mono signal, and would vary (one higher than the other, or vice versa) as frequency and modulation level changed. I asked DS about it and they said there were some mods/updates that it needed, so I sent it to them. It took about a month, but when I got it back it really wasn't much better than when I sent it in. I opened it up and saw all the nicely labeled pots so I asked them for the adjustment procedure, which they didn't want to give me. They wanted me to send the unit back to them again and I refused. I also saw some modifications on tiny circuit boards that were supported by thin solid wires to the main board, and one wire wasn't even soldered down. As I recall, AM HD signals sounded lousy, far worse than my car radio tuner. Due to the shoddy workmanship and lousy performance, I sold the unit quickly to minimize my losses. I wouldn't own another piece of DS equipment even if it was free.

The Belar analog meter was much more accurate and didn't suffer the problems the M2 had.

A local station bought one of their HD tuners direct from them. While it turned on, the front panel controls seemed dead. Turns out you had to hold every button down for several minutes before it would do anything (not normal). The unit decided that it had to see something connected to its network jack or it would just sit there ignoring everything else. In other words, almost DOA. It was returned. Another unit came back and it worked fine, but it left a bad taste in our mouths.

You could use a Sangean or Sony HD tuner to verify audio presence, and if you "calibrate" the output level to an existing mod monitor, you can get a fairly good indication of actual analog modulation. Far cheaper than buying a real mod monitor.

Some of the newer HD tuners (DS, for one) will stay locked to an HD channel even if the HD signal goes away. The earlier ones would revert to the analog signal and not return to the HD, making them somewhat useless in real-world pickup situations.

kcbooboo wrote:You could use a Sangean or Sony HD tuner to verify audio presence, and if you "calibrate" the output level to an existing mod monitor, you can get a fairly good indication of actual analog modulation. Far cheaper than buying a real mod monitor.

Some of the newer HD tuners (DS, for one) will stay locked to an HD channel even if the HD signal goes away. The earlier ones would revert to the analog signal and not return to the HD, making them somewhat useless in real-world pickup situations.

Bob M.

There's someone here using one of the DS HD tuners to feed a translator from a leased HD3 since it stays locked on. Audio is poor (since it's HD3, not enough bits in the bucket) but it does stay locked instead of falling through to the main channel. They must not have any alarm outputs on them though, or the alarm closure isn't hooked up, because when the HD dies the translator stays on with dead air, and one time it glitched somehow and started airing digital buzzsaw noise for a few hours.

kcbooboo wrote:You could use a Sangean or Sony HD tuner to verify audio presence, and if you "calibrate" the output level to an existing mod monitor, you can get a fairly good indication of actual analog modulation. Far cheaper than buying a real mod monitor.

Some of the newer HD tuners (DS, for one) will stay locked to an HD channel even if the HD signal goes away. The earlier ones would revert to the analog signal and not return to the HD, making them somewhat useless in real-world pickup situations.

Bob M.

There's someone here using one of the DS HD tuners to feed a translator from a leased HD3 since it stays locked on. Audio is poor (since it's HD3, not enough bits in the bucket) but it does stay locked instead of falling through to the main channel. They must not have any alarm outputs on them though, or the alarm closure isn't hooked up, because when the HD dies the translator stays on with dead air, and one time it glitched somehow and started airing digital buzzsaw noise for a few hours.

You can do direct feed if you're translating an HD channel. That's the way to go.

One translater I know of has both the DS HD receiver locked on to the main TX's HD1 signal and also a Ubiquiti 900 MHz wireless network connection with a Bric that they use as the primary source. A silence detector on the Bric's output will switch to the HD receiver. I suspect they could switch cables and switch to the Bric if the main HD goes dead. No need to use alarm connections that way.

kcbooboo wrote:You could use a Sangean or Sony HD tuner to verify audio presence, and if you "calibrate" the output level to an existing mod monitor, you can get a fairly good indication of actual analog modulation. Far cheaper than buying a real mod monitor.

Some of the newer HD tuners (DS, for one) will stay locked to an HD channel even if the HD signal goes away. The earlier ones would revert to the analog signal and not return to the HD, making them somewhat useless in real-world pickup situations.

Bob M.

There's someone here using one of the DS HD tuners to feed a translator from a leased HD3 since it stays locked on. Audio is poor (since it's HD3, not enough bits in the bucket) but it does stay locked instead of falling through to the main channel. They must not have any alarm outputs on them though, or the alarm closure isn't hooked up, because when the HD dies the translator stays on with dead air, and one time it glitched somehow and started airing digital buzzsaw noise for a few hours.

You can do direct feed if you're translating an HD channel. That's the way to go.

I suspect that in this case the owner of said translator is either too cheap to pay for a direct feed or has it stuck in his mind that he's not allowed to do a direct feed and must use the HD receiver. There is no remote control or monitoring installed on it either so I suspect the former is why there is no direct feed.